The First Sound
by NovaTheUnofficialAuthor
Summary: In a modernized world of the near future, Crypton and Yamaha have teamed up to create the world's first ever singing android. With the success gained by Hatsune Miku, Yamaha starts to produce more unique "Vocaloids" for financial gain, without the androids knowing. Only time will tell how these idols will start to realize the truth and what they'll have to do about it...
1. A New World

There was a clacking of keyboards and the whirring of hard drives, the voices of various men and women and blinking lights from various monitors. For the scientists and engineers at Crypton Industries, this was an important day in not only the history of their company, but for history as a whole.

For a long time now, Crypton Industries had teamed up with Yamaha Corporation to create and manufacture a singing android, the first of its kind, in a new series of robots that they would call the "Character Vocal Series," a series based off of their original vocal synthesizer series. Crypton had promised Yamaha that the first idol in the series of robots would be a breakthrough in modern technology, as far as they were concerned, but after the past sixteen and a half months working on the damned thing, they were already at the end of their rope. They had spent countless hours working overtime trying to calculate information, screw and weld parts onto the prototypes, and gathering important data needed to create various features of its body. They just wanted to get it over with already.

Which is why today is a very special day for them. Their supervisors had notified them the previous day, telling them that the final version of the robot was officially ready for it's very first test. All of the workers were busy scurrying around the place, like a colony of ants that have been disrupted from their positions, trying to get every little detail of the project finished on the last minute.

"Is subject CV01 ready for it's first test track?" asked one of the workers among the confusion.

"Just a few more minutes until it's booted up, sir," his colleague shouted back.

As soon as everyone had finished all their hustle and bustle, they all gathered around in front of his or her control panel, flipping this and pushing that, while their exhausted, baggy eyes were busy scrolling across the screens of green and white text. From a tall glass cylinder in front of them was the figure of a girl in her late teens, inside of a blue liquid that slowly drained away from the bottom. As the water drained into the tube, the girl emerged along with it. The workers leaned in from their control panels and computers, so they could finally get a good glimpse of what the thing they've been working on for so long looked like.

The first thing they saw was that she had long, teal hair and pale white skin, much like a fantasy character from a book or a game would look like. Soon after her long hair and pale body had finished revealing themselves, the blue liquid had finished draining through the holes in the bottom. The girl stood there motionless as a statue, her skinny arms were left dangling on her sides and her back was arched perfectly straight.

"Where 'n tarnation is that darned activation button?" one of the workers complained quietly.

Another one whispered, "There's one on my panel, I'll turn 'er on."

There was a whir and a wizz in the tube, the sound of hardware booting up for the first time. As her man-made brain started turning on, she slowly opened her eyes, peeking at her surroundings through the cracks between her eyelids. In the middle of the opening caps shown a stunning pair of blue eyes, highlighted by the little bit of light from a desk lamp on one of the cubicles' tables.

At last, it seemed the weight on her eyes was lifted and the blurriness of her vision from before started to become sharper and clearer, to the point where she could now see everything laid out in front of her. At first, she was very confused, not knowing who she was or where she was at. She wondered who all of these mysterious people were, and why they were even looking at her.

She approached the glass of her case slowly and tapped her fingers across it to see if it made a sound, and when that didn't work, she banged on it with her clenched fists next. Her light blue eyebrows crumpled up together in a disappointed frown when it stayed silent. As she was busy banging on the tube, she moved her head in all sorts of different places, exploring the different nooks and crannies of the small space she was captured in, trying to find out whether or not there was some sort of escape exit she could crawl into.

The engineers were amazed at how she already had such great control on her motor skills. They expected her to stand still and await for the glass to lift, like any normal android would, but she wasn't programmed like the others. She eagerly got up and started looking for a way out. Although, after quite the long time of banging on the unbreakable glass, her robotic joints became fatigued and she slid her back down against the inside of the tube to no prevail. She sat down, brought her knees sadly up to her bare chest, and cradled herself in her arms in a fetal position to try comforting herself, asking things in her mind like,

" _Where am I? What am I? Who am I?_ "

The engineers, seeing how confused and scared she was, reassured her she would be okay. The girl didn't understand half of what they were saying, however, because it was all muffled out by the thick glass that encased her like a display in a museum in front of a crowd of aweing spectators. She could only assume that their intent was to try and hurt her in some way, which only made her curl up in fear even more, her hair draping over her timid face.

"It's alright dear, no need to be afraid," one of the female engineers said calmly.

This person pressed a few buttons on her control panel and flipped a switch that lifted the glass cover off the cylinder, causing the girl to instantaneously roll over onto the ground. She spasmodically stretched out all of her limbs, trying to lift herself off the freezing, metallic floor, and back onto the glass of the tube, before she realized there wasn't any tube left for her to climb onto.

"Let's get you into some warm clothes now, shall we?" she smiled as she walked toward the girl.

The female stuck her hand out to the girl politely, to assure her she didn't have anything to be scared about. She wanted to earn her trust. The girl, not knowing what this gesture implied, backed away on her hands and knees and rolled herself up into a little, pale ball again, shaking like a leaf in the wind. Her bright eyes wandered around the room in this terrified state of hers, looking and scanning all the different, scary faces that surrounded her.

"Oh, no, no, don't be scared! Just grab my hand with yours, darling, I'll help you on your feet," she smiled kindly.

Now the girl felt just a little more assured that she wouldn't be hurt, but she still reached her shaky hand out to her reluctantly. She was still very new to the place and was awfully scared of everything, may I remind you. Anything and everything that she could see was a possible candidate as a threat to her existence.

Although the worst-case scenarios were already lined up in the girl's mind, the kind lady helped her up and led her to a separate room down a hallway to the right of the tube, where she and other some other nice females helped the girl get dressed.

To start, they had pulled out a whole wardrobe full of clothes and laid them out neatly so that the girl could examine every tiny detail of each one. Oh, how there were many beautiful clothes offered to that girl. All of which were hers, but she could only choose one for the time being. What was she to wear? She couldn't simply pick just one! They all dazzled the girl very much, that it seemed almost impossible to choose only one. But, to the surprise of the ladies, her eyes were suddenly pulled away from all of the other elegant dresses and outfits and they glued themselves onto quite the peculiar outfit indeed.

The outfit she was staring at had dark grey arm warmers with a synthesizer pattern. The outfit also came with a grey short-sleeved top with a collar and a yellow badge knitted onto it, a teal tie with two black clips on the end, a flowy mini skirt which was teal at the bottom and dark grey the rest of the way up, and dark grey, fitted, thigh-high boots with teal outsoles (and who could forget the black and pink hair ties!).The girl, not knowing how to speak, lifted her trembling arm and extended her index finger to the outfit, as a sign that she wanted to wear this one. The other females nodded in understanding and helped her put the outfit on her.

Meanwhile, the other scientists and engineers were pacing back and forth on the outside of the room, waiting anxiously for the female android to come out, becoming more impatient with each passing second she was in there. And then, suddenly, amidst the biting of fingernails and walking in circles, was the creak of a certain golden doorknob. The workers quickly jerked their heads and turned their attention-almost like a curious puppy dog would-towards the sluggish rotation of the knob. They waited in suspense as the girl twisted the knob open and gently pushed the white door away from her. And when that white door was pushed away to the wall, in the doorway stood the breathtaking figure of the girl, dressed in that grey/teal themed outfit and using the two black/pink hair ties to hold up two long, teal pigtails.

"My...it's brilliant!" exclaimed one of the scientists in delight.

The other scientists and engineers nodded and agreed, and gave a quick round of applause to the robot, whistling and whooping all the while. All of them sighed with a breath of relief and were overcome with a wave of pride because they knew that all of their overtime, re-calculating, and perseverance really did pay off in the end. They were glad to have a fully-functional, moving robot. The question now was, could she do what she was meant to do? Could she sing?

The girl, not knowing what to do in a situation like this, mimicked them. She cracked a sweet, tiny smile and clapped the palms of her cold hands along with them. The scientists smiled and laughed at this gesture, and greeted the girl with warm wishes and kind hearts. They would reach their hands out to her and asked her many questions, and she shook their hands and she answered on a piece of paper. Although, there was one question in particular that she couldn't possibly answer with just a ballpoint pen and a blank, white copy paper.

One of the scientists asked her if she could speak for them. Some of his fellow colleagues agreed, they wanted to know if the voicebox they programmed into her worked. Others became silent and skeptical about her ability to talk, thinking that she wasn't ready to do something like that this immediate. She didn't know how to talk, but despite her uncertainty, she tried very hard to. She wanted to please every single one of the humans standing there in front of her. She wanted to show them that she could fulfill her purpose as to why she was built. She wanted to prove to them that she could speak just as well as any of them could!

And then, when she and the crowd of amused scientists expected it the least, from her throat came a high sound which cracked and wheezed, and struggled to reach the tip of her tongue. The workers focused their attention harder to the girl as she fought to figure out where her artificial voice box was. Her voice squeaked in the attentive silence as she was still trying to force that little bit of sound, even if it was only a little bit, out of her throat. When finally, it managed to crawl out of her mouth, in the form of,

"Haaaa."

The workers blinked in confusion and inquisitiveness. What did she mean by the elongated syllable, "ha?" Was she trying to say a word that starts with H, like "hello" or "happy?" Was she trying to see what her voice sounded like before she spoke?

"Jiiii."

Now they were even more confused than before! What kind of word did she wanted to say that had "ha" and "ji" in it? _Unless_...they thought... _she's speaking in her native language, perhaps? In Japanese?_

Their question was finally answered when the whole thing came out of her mouth. They were indeed correct, her words were in Japanese, but she was singing those words, not speaking them! And she was singing them in a song that they had never even heard of before!

"-mete no oto wa nande shita ka? Anata no hajimete no oto wa…"

It was the first time the girl had ever spoke, let alone sing, and the men and women standing there were even more astonished than before at her lovely voice. She sang like she had been singing for a million years, plus twenty time that. Her voice charmed them so, as she hit each high note perfectly and dropped her pitch smoothly.

She didn't know what to think, she just began singing like it was instinct, and she didn't know when she began or when she would stop. But, she smiled as she was singing, because she was delighted that she made some smile, some jaw-drop, and some to even cry. Finally, as the song that was made up on the spot came to a close, she breathed the last lines of her original work, singing,

"Hajimete no oto ni nare mashita ka? Anata no hajimete no oto ni. Sekai no dokodemo, watashi wa utau sorezore no hajimete no oto o.."

As her voice faded and ceased, she notices how the small crowd was so stunned, they were left speechless after the song. The girl got worried that she made a mistake in her singing, scrunching her eyebrows together again, but this time in fear that she didn't please them as much as she thought. But, to her surprise, one of the male scientists stepped up, proclaiming,

"Well, boys, it doesn't look like she'll hafta sing the test tracks...we already found the first sound of the future!" he yelled.

"Our own Hatsune Miku!" shouted another.

The group of individuals cheered and clapped again at the successful attempt at capturing the perfect image and voice of an idol and transforming that into an operating android that would live forever. An immortal female music idol? "The first sound of the future," huh? That was exactly what Miku was to them. When the future generations at Crypton will look at Miku, they will be looking at the opening to a new world. An advanced world of androids where some humans would become obsolete, a world where an everlasting race of robots would exist.

A world doomed for _[critical_ _ **ERROR**_ _]_ and _[critical_ _ **ERROR**_ _]_.


	2. The Plan

Later on in the day, a trio of scientists tried leading Miku into a circular elevator made out of glass and held up by metal frames. They wanted to try showing her a surprise upstairs. Although, Miku was extremely hesitant. The glassy elevator reminded her of the glass case she had awoken from and spent the first few minutes of her life trapped in. She didn't want to feel that claustrophobic feeling ever again, at least not after that. The scientists understood why she was scared, and went in first to prove that it was safe for her. Miku, seeing how the container didn't show any harm to the scientists, figured it might be alright to step inside of it for a brief moment.

They showed her a panel of buttons on the inside of the elevator and told her to press the one with the number "11" on it. Miku, being the wondrous android she was, gladly volunteered to press the button to see what would happen. She pushed it down gently with the tip of her index finger and heard it making a clicking noise on the other side of the panel. Soon, the door of the tiny space closed, the button that she pressed lit up like a miniscule sun, and the ropes that held the elevator started to pull them up, up, up!

Miku was so scared at this sudden movement that she fell down against her back and crossed her shaky knees together. At first she was fearful, _very_ fearful, in fact. She didn't even know what was up and what was down for a short second riding on the elevator! But that fearfulness that she had slowly vanished as she realized that is wasn't that dangerous. Granted, she still felt a bit iffy about the idea of a _glass_ elevator, so she didn't exactly move off of her spot right away, but she enjoyed the ride up. MIku wondered whether it made her very happy or excited or eager? She just couldn't place her finger on how it made her feel on the inside, but it was something that felt really good! She felt content with the building she was living in, she supposed. It wasn't the worst place in the world for her to stay.

Then, suddenly, the elevator stopped suddenly with a sweet, short "ding!" and it opened its doors before the scientists and Miku. The scientists stepped their brown shoe-covered feet out of the glass and helped Miku up and out as well. They were in the intersection of three hallways, one coming in from the right, one coming from the left, and one from in front. The scientists led her down the front and she followed as close as she could to them.

They stomped down the hallway and one started pulling out a strange-looking card from the back pocket of his pants. Then they all stopped at the left wall of the hallway, at a white door with a glass window on it. The scientist who pulled out his card swiped it on some sort of control panel and the screen on that panel switched to one with green text which read, "Access granted. To confirm action, please take the scan test."

The scientist obeyed the instructions and faced his brown eye against a thin, plexiglass-like surface where a red laser skimmed across the surface of his eyeball. After hearing a ding, he stood up straight again and pressed his thumb against the same surface. After the laser was done crossing his thumb, the trio and Miku heard another ding, and the text on the screen changed again.

"Access granted," it read, and the door slid open.

As soon as the door had finished opening, Miku stood there like a statue, staring into the room with great wonder sparkling in her eyes. And then, as soon as she was finished gazing gleefully from the outside, she instantly launched herself into the room and was then preoccupied with wandering around it. She marveled at all the different little trinkets and gadgets that would move and twinkle as she poked at them and studied them with sparkly, googly eyes. The scientists chuckled at her want of knowledge. They found it funny how she wanted to know every little thing that was in her room before settling in there.

"Have fun in here," one of them told her and smiled.

Miku nodded and went back on her business, which was touching a glass case in the corner of her room that had a microphone in it. She left her grubby, oily fingerprints along the outside and fogged the glass up with her hot breath as she stared at the marvelous device.

The scientists grinned and pressed a button that closed the door. The button activated two hydraulic pistons on the left-hand side of the metallic door, pushing it closed with a _hissss_ and a _wisssh_. When the door met with the wall, it was squished between two pieces of metal which locked it in place.

Miku, hearing that the door locked itself up, walked up to the glass in the door and waved goodbye to the scientists up against it. They waved back to her, turned around to the way they came from, and walked down the hallway to their laboratory, where they were called upon for a company announcement.

As they had disappeared down into the elevator, Miku started fiddling with the controls to the door to open it up and explore the whole facility. She wanted to see more-more-she just _had_ to see more of it! She needed to know the place inside and out, she needed to know how they make their robots! She coveted knowledge because she couldn't stand being ignorant to every little thing. She just needed to know more about the place that made her!

After meddling around with some buttons and switches, she found out the combination to open up the door from the inside:

" _Red button, green lever, blue button. Red button, green lever, blue button,_ " she repeated in her mind over and over again.

The door hissed and weeshed open in front of her and she stepped out on the other side of the door frame into the sterile, white hallway. She looked quizzically around the hall that stretched both left and right and having forked at both ends. She wondered which part of the corridor to go down because there was so much she wanted to know. The question was now, which route here was she to go first?

" _Hmm...maybe I should take the left side,_ " she thought. " _I already came from the right side...I'll explore that last!_ "

She crossed the hall, pressed her right hand against the wall, and followed it down the left side of the corridor. She turned a right at the left end of the hallway and continued on from there. It didn't seem like there were any more paths to take from here on out. There were only a few doors on the walls, two of them on the right wall led to some restrooms and the two on the other side were for the break rooms. It seemed the one on the very end was just for storage because through the glass, she could see a broom leaning on the wall inside and a janitor's coat hanging from the ceiling.

She turned around and went down the other way, to the route leftwards from the corridor she departed from. Her hand trailed across the white painted walls as she followed it to the end of that hall. Nothing much here, either. It was only a few offices and a drinking fountain.

She went back and walked over to the intersection of the three hallways, turning right into the corridor she originally departed from and walked down that way to the intersection on the other side. She peeked right-only a smoking zone with no other place to go-then she glanced left-to the double doors at the very end of that hall. She couldn't see anything through the windows of the double door, strangely enough. Only a sign signifying that it was a staircase leading down to a lower level of the building.

Being the curious girl that she was, she just _had_ to take a look through the doors. She skipped down the hallway to the doors and swung them open with a gentle push. It seems her prediction was correct. When those doors had opened up, in the room revealed a spiralling staircase leading to a deeper part of the facility.

She took two careful steps on the first stair and closed the doors behind. Leaning in over the banister, she tried to get a good look down the middle to see where the stairs led to, but they seemed to be infinite.

" _This isn't the way the scientists took me up here, though..._ " she thought to herself, " _I'll just have to keep going and see if where the stairs take me, I guess._ "

She clutched her left hand on the banister for support and cautiously traversed down the flight of stairs. Step by step, she ventured nearer to the bottom of the staircase. As she traveled down the stairs, she heard something strange. Something... _voices?_... _Yelling now?_ She got scared as she trekked on, hearing the scary voices grow louder and louder.

"... _wasn't part of the deal!_ "

" _This is what you signed up for._ "

" _I can't do this, sir, I have a family to think about! Please reconsider!"_

" _I'm sorry, Jannet, but it's too late to turn back now."_

" _Please sir, I just can't do it! My daughter won't get to see me! I-I can't-"_

" _Take her away, boys."_

" _No, please! Please, sir, don't do this! No! No!"_

" _Goodbye, Jannet."_

Miku was scared that this "Jannet" person was screaming so horrifically. Why was she screaming in the first place? What were she and the man that Miku didn't know talking about down there? Miku's mind was too engulfed in the scene that just happened that she wasn't looking where she was looking and she tripped over her ankle down the stairs.

Miku didn't know what happened, it all started too quickly! Much too quickly! Her body tumbled down the rest of the stairs, bumping and thumping as she rolled along. She couldn't do anything about it, but it hurt. Somehow, it hurt very badly, terribly even. No, the pain felt like torture to her defenseless robotic shell. She couldn't bear it any longer, but she no matter how much she struggled, she couldn't stop the momentum that she had picked up.

She tried curling up into a ball, guarding her chest with her forearms and her abdomen with her knees, but then her back was left unguarded and scraped and bruised itself on the metal stairs. She just wanted it to end! She didn't know what else to do but to wait until it ended, but how long would that be? She was so scared that she started pondering if it would've been better if she would have just stayed put in her own room, like the scientists told her to.

All of a sudden, it came to a stop.

Her left side was left lying on the ground and her immobile arms and legs dropped to the floor. She breathed a heavy breath in shock and in sudden relief that her body had stopped tumbling down the stairs like a rag-doll. She laid there for a few minutes, contemplating what just happened, as her body was still quivering from the traumatizing experience. The most important thing now, though, is that no one heard her and that no one would come to investigate what happened at the stairs. For now, that was the only thing she was concerned about.

She placed her right palm on the chilly floor and kept it firmly planted there as she tried to put her other palm in the same position. The muscles in her forearms tried pushing the weight of her mechanical body up onto her knees and locked into a kneeling position. Then she placed her hands on top of her quivering knees, shifted all the weight of her body to her elbows, and thrusted herself upwards into the air. Her knees were starting to give out again and she fell onto the rail to the staircase for support, holding onto it as she tried gaining balance in her legs again.

She took a deep breath in, and then out, in an attempt to calm herself down and clear her mind from that dramatic fall.

When she got up on her feet, she instinctively walked over to the door to her right and pushed it open just a crack, big enough where she could see into the room next door. From there, she saw tall men in long, white lab coats. They had clipboards in their hands and pens in their ears as they were walking across the room to the staircase. It seemed like they were talking since they were facing each other and moving their lips in various movements. Miku closed the door back up and hid herself underneath a few steps on the spiral staircase. She was hoping she could hear what they were saying as they were coming through the door and up the stairs.

The pair of scientists shoved the door out of their way and approached the spiraling staircase. They stopped in front of it and continued their conversation in the room.

"Well, it sounds like a deal. Did ya talk to the boss about it?"

"Of course. He gave it the green light, so it looks like we're good to go from here on out."

"Terrific. Man, you should get a raise for such an idea!"

"Heh, I wish! I'm just happy it got approved."

"Say, speaking of creating singing robots and such, what do you think about that new android that lab 11 developed?"

"CV01?"

"Yes, they also call her Hatsune Miku."

"Ah, from the sounds of it, she seems pretty impressive. I'm surprised they got 'er done in less than 3 years."

"Yeah, pretty remarkable thing, if you ask me."

"Well, Jake, I gotta get going. I got this extra project I decided to manage and if I don't get this document done tomorrow, the boss is gonna get angry at me."

"Alright, then. See ya in the cubicle tomorrow, Ben."

"See you there. Take care!"

The scientists shook hands and one went up the staircase while the other went back through the door and to the exit.

MIku, who had finished her eavesdropping at this point, wondered what kind of a plan the man "Ben" had. She wondered hard, but she couldn't seem to connect the dots. Something didn't add up to her. She had to know more before she understood the situation. What did she not know yet? Miku, being as curious as ever, stood up from underneath the stairs and treaded over to the door to see what was on the other side.

She pushed the door to the side and, to her right, she was greeted by the bright whiteness of sparkling clean tiled floors and neatly arranged cubicles. To her left was a wall with a colourful blue wallpaper and thousands of cat posters with uplifting sayings and words like "believe!" and "you can do it!" Between all the cute, little cat posters was a metal door with a large caution symbol on it, and a sign beneath that which read,

"Please take caution when entering."  
"Radioactive substances ahead."

"Authorized personnel only."

Miku wondered what this radioactive substance was. Miku also wondered what radioactive even meaned! Maybe, she thought, it was part of this plan that those two scientists were talking about earlier! It looked like it wasn't locked, it just looked pretty scary. She was hesitant at going into the door, not knowing whether or not it would be dangerous, but she swore she heard someone coming towards her. She heard footsteps walking in her direction. They got louder and louder, faster and faster, and it seemed like they were coming at full speed!

She didn't have enough time to think! Afraid of getting caught, she quickly grabbed a hold of the handle to the metallic door, dragged the heavy lump of metal open, and went inside and closed the door shut.

* * *

Author's note: I didn't have enough time to edit the story, so I apologize if you notice any irregular sentences or sentence fragments. If you spot anything, please let me know right away. I hope you all are enjoying the story so far. Thank you for reading. ~Nova


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